Festive Message from London FA CEO

Before we break for the festive holidays we would like to thank the thousands of volunteers and partners that have worked with us to deliver these...

London is a fantastically diverse city where football is enjoyed and played by over half a million people, whether at school, Saturday/Sunday League, five-aside or at a professional level. We want to reflect this diversity in the members of our Board and Council, and have undertaken a transformational overhaul of our Board and Council, and by publicly inviting applicants from diverse backgrounds to apply for a range of new Non-Executive Board positions and new roles for our Council. The move, which follows The FA’s own governance initiative earlier this year, will ensure that London’s diverse football community has a greater say in shaping a more inclusive and sustainable future for the sport in the city. The LFA’s corporate governance reforms comply with Sport England’s Code for Sports Governance, which was launched in May 2017 to ensure the highest levels of transparency are present in all sport.

We have delivered a £70k new grassroots fund to support our clubs to develop and retain teams which has inturn generated 94 new teams across London. Based on this success we have grown this fund to £100k for the 2017/18 season.

We have secured a number of new partnerships with providers to dramatically improve the benefits of affiliation to deliver greater value for money and improve the services we provide to you. For the first time this season you will have received a welcome pack on completion of affiliation, providing a one stop shop to the support service available to all our 1,300+ clubs, representing over 4,000 teams and 42 leagues. Through our new partnership with SportsGuard we have been able to reduce the cost of insurance at every level of the game to provide a safe environment for people to enjoy football.

We have directly supported 6 Local Authorities in London to progress to stage 2 of Parklife, where they are developing exciting football facilities improvement plans across London. As we work in partnership to improve the access and quality of football facilities across London working side by side with the Football Foundation.

Against this backdrop we are fully committed to continuing to deliver against our mission, there is a lot to look forward to in 2018. Together, we will bring the game that we all love to many more people.

The team and I would like to thank you all for the contribution and impact you make every day to grassroots football across London and wish you , your families and friends a fantastic festive break .